LOWE: Ross is an open book on city sex workers

Rene Ross, executive director of Stepping Stone, a support and outreach group for Halifax sex workers, will be one of the 'human books' at Keshen Goodman Library’s Human Library program on Saturday. (PETER PARSONS / Staff)

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LEZLIE LOWE

What are you going to ask Rene Ross about sex work?

Go ahead. Ask her anything.

“I love it when people ask me about the trade,” says the executive director of Stepping Stone, a support and outreach organization for Halifax sex workers.

“There are no dumb questions when it comes to something so surrounded by myth and stigma and controversy and titillation.”

Ross will take on all comers at the Keshen Goodman Library’s Human Library program on Saturday. From 10 a.m. until 2 p.m., she’ll become a “human book,” able to be “checked out” for 20-minute conversations.

She’s sharing the proverbial stacks with a nuclear physicist, a “parkour” enthusiast, a national video producer for CBC and a mom with only two per cent vision. A blind library date, so long as you bring your card.

At human library programs in other cities, Ross says, it’s typically a sex worker that’s the book. But with Halifax’s size, and with the stigma sex workers face here, anonymity and the threat of violence is an issue.

So it’s up to Ross, who, ironically, is in the unusual position of being a prominent Canadian sex worker champion without having ever worked the trade.

She’s been criticized for that, for being a “non-experiential advocate,” she says.

“That’s kind of hard to get used to. Like, it’s really weird wishing you had sex work experience for your advocacy.”

But Ross works intimately with Stepping Stone’s clients, about 115 former and current sex workers.

Her office is Stepping Stone’s drop-in centre. Her day could be grant writing, doing food or clothing bank referrals, helping set up housing or court outreach.

“I kind of take for granted that I’m privileged enough to spend every day in the company of, and learning from, sex workers,” she says. “Most people do not have that.”

Consider that unique experience available by proxy at Saturday’s Human Library program.

“Some of the most common questions? People want to know about pimps, about trafficking, why sex workers do what they do. It’s more general curiosity.

“And I think over the past few years, more questions are being directed at the safety and well being of sex workers. I really like that.”

Ross gets her share of negativity, too, as the head of an organization supporting some of Halifax’s most marginalized — and moralized — men and women.

Her approach is to ignore personal attacks, reflect on constructive criticism and fight back against opinions she knows are dead wrong.

“If it’s an argument around work that’s totally irrational, like criminalizing sex workers, then I immediately rally against it,” she says.

And being on the defensive for unpopular opinions doesn’t get Ross down.

“Criticism against the policies we have? It can’t (get you down). Because you know it, you work with it, you see it,” she says. “There’s a benefit in knowing the trade so intimately. You know that you’re right.”

Ross started as a volunteer with Stepping Stone almost a decade ago, after seeing her first bad date sheet, a tool sex workers use to keep each other abreast of violence.

The commonplace violence being reported shocked her. It was “equal to the human rights abuses facing women in conflict zones.”

Stepping Stone turns 25 in April, making it the second-oldest sex worker support and outreach organization in Canada.

Hey, you could ask Ross about that on Saturday at the Keshen Goodman. Or something else.

“It’s like throwing a party,” Ross reflects. “You don’t know if anyone will come. It’s like, what if I’m the book that nobody has any questions for?”

Highly doubtful.

Lezlie Lowe is a freelance writer in Halifax. Follow her on Twitter @lezlielowe.